People Don't Change Overnight
by TolkienScholar
Summary: Oneshot. Sequel to "Time Can Do So Much." It seems like coming to understand Darry better has only made their fighting worse. Of course, maybe the real problem is that Pony and Darry still don't truly understand each other after all. Soda might be able to help... if they'll listen. Chapter 12 Reimagining.


**Disclaimer: **_**The Outsiders**_** is the property of S. E. Hinton****. No copyright infringement is intended. Many lines are taken directly from the book, but have been reframed or given additional context.**

* * *

**MC4A Challenges:** FF; SoC; LL; NC; ToS; BAON; VV; Cluster; RoB; AV; ER; Fence; Star; SHoE; O3; T3; War  
**Individual Challenges:** Short Jog (N); Advice from the Mug (N); New Fandom Smell (Y); Booger Breath (N); Cracked Façade (Y); Misunderstood (N); Tissue Warning (N); Times Go On (N); Feast (N)  
**Representations:** Ponyboy Curtis; Sodapop Curtis; Darry Curtis; Curtis brothers; Taking Care of Each Other; Angst; Stubborn Pride; Fighting; High School; Breaking Point; Getting Out of the Hood; Losing Someone; Drawing; Horses; Minor Traumatic Brain Injury; Resolving to Change  
**Bonus Challenges:** Second Verse (Queen Bee, Under the Bridge, Muck & Slime, Lyre Liar, Lovely Coconuts, Mother Hen, Spinning Plates, Unwanted Advice, Nontraditional, Sneeze Weasel, Teat Juice); Chorus (Hot Stuff, Some Beach, Abandoned Ship, A Long Dog, Larger Than Life, Mouth of Babes, Tomorrow's Shade, Delicious Lie, Fizzy Lemonade, Machismo – Crying, Wabi Sabi)  
**Tertiary Bonus Challenges:** T3 (Tether); O3 (Orator, Oath); SHoE (Oblique)  
**Word Count:** 2714

* * *

**A/N: As a follow-up to "Time Can Do So Much," I decided to do a little rewrite of the beginning of chapter 12 as well, focusing on some of the same themes. I had to cut out several parts, like the details of the court hearing and that awesome little scene where Pony fends off some Socs with a broken bottle, not because I didn't like them—quite the reverse—but because they didn't fit the story I was trying to tell. The most notable change is probably the direction Pony and Darry's argument took, which ended up leaving out Darry's beautiful little speech on how "you don't just stop living because you lose someone." I still think he would have said this to Pony, but I'd like to think the circumstances could have been different, maybe a healthy conversation instead of a fight.**

* * *

People Don't Change Overnight

I guess I was a fool to think everything would be all fine and dandy between me and Darry after that. People don't change overnight. Somebody who yells all the time ain't gonna stop just because one time he held you and told you how much he cares about you, and somebody who hates being yelled at ain't gonna suddenly be okay with it just because now he understands what's behind it. If anything, our fights got worse, since now that I got Darry, I wasn't so scared of him and started yelling right back. That only made Darry madder, and soon we'd both be yelling so loud Soda said we'd bring the house down.

There was no shortage of things to yell about lately, either. My head got better, and after the court hearing (which turned out not to be as big a thing as everybody made it out to be), our lives went basically back to normal. Except, for some reason, I didn't. I started running into things, like the door or the kitchen counter, and kept tripping over the coffee table and losing things. I always have been kind of absent-minded, but man, now I was lucky if I made it home from school with the right notebook and with both shoes on. I walked all the way home once in my stocking feet and didn't even notice it until Steve made some bright remark about it. I guess I'd left my shoes in the locker room at school, but I never found them. Did I ever catch it over that one. I told Darry he was just mad because he'd have to spend part of his precious paycheck buying me new shoes, but we both knew that wasn't it. It was the middle of a wet November when I pulled that stunt, and Darry was scared I'd take sick. Made me even madder when he turned out to be right. Of course, we made it up when I was flat on my back with pneumonia, but I knew it wasn't a good pattern me and Darry were falling into, saying sorry to each other only when I was deathly sick.

Then when I wasn't being unusually stupid, there was always the classic fallback: my grades. And boy did they ever get to be something worth yelling about. I didn't do too badly in math because Darry checked over my homework in that and usually caught all my mistakes and made me do it over again, but in English I really washed out. I used to make _A_'s in English, mostly because my teacher made us do compositions all the time. I mean, I know I don't talk good English (have you ever heard a hood that did?), but I can write it good when I try. At least, I could before. Now I was lucky to get a _D_ on a composition. Darry couldn't do anything to fix my grade in that class; for one thing, English was never his best subject, and for another, it's hard to check a composition that hasn't been written. The ones I actually did I wrote at 2 AM the night before, and Darry didn't have time to look at them before he went to work in the morning.

The problem was I just didn't have anything to write about anymore. How could I, when so much of my energy every day was taken up trying not to think about—trying not to _think_? You can't write if you can't think.

Still, when my English teacher kept me after class and told me I'd fail unless I could come up with a real good semester theme, I did try. Honest I did. Darry told me I had to or else, so I stared at that blank sheet of notebook paper until the blue lines were imprinted on the backs of my eyelids. I made one false start, a couple rambling paragraphs about Soda's horse Mickey Mouse, but it came out sounding corny, so I ripped out the page and tossed it on the floor in a wad. That was personal, anyways.

The other ideas that came into my head were all paths my brain refused to go down. Memories about Mom and Dad, about Joh—Dally. Every story I could think of involved someone who was gone from my life for good, and it wasn't worth drudging up all that pain just to pass some stupid English class. Soon I found myself doodling names across the paper: Darrel Shaynne Curtis, Jr., Sodapop Patrick Curtis, Ponyboy Michael Curtis. Wasn't too hard to tell which of our names Dad had thought up and which had come from Mom, I thought, and that was as far as I got before my brain shut down that line of thinking, too. So I covered the rest of the paper with drawings of horses. _That_ was going to get a good grade like all git-out.

I was relieved to hear the front door slam shut and Soda come in yelling, "Hey, did the mail come in yet?" I was back in the bedroom, but I could imagine him come in, same way he did every day of his life: kick off his shoes, throw his jacket toward the sofa and miss, go into the kitchen for a glass of chocolate milk. He always runs around in his stocking feet; he doesn't like shoes.

But then Soda did a funny thing. He came in and flopped down on the bed and started smoking a cigarette. He hardly ever smokes, except when something is really bugging him or when he wants to look tough. And he doesn't have to impress me; I know he's tough.

"How was work?"

"Okay." He didn't elaborate, and that was weird, too. Enough characters tend to show up around a greasy gas station in inner-city Tulsa that Soda's always got some kind of crazy story.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothin'." He got up and left the room before I could say anything else, and in a minute I heard pots and pans banging around in the kitchen; it was his turn to make dinner. I should have followed him in there and made him tell me what was wrong, but I guess it must have been another one of those times when my brain wasn't quite working right, 'cause I just kept sitting there drawing horses.

Supper came out right, which was unusual, because Soda's always trying something different. Like, "green eggs and ham" different, or green pancakes at any rate, which is one of the culinary masterpieces Darry and I have had to choke our way through. I couldn't tell you what was in them, but I have a feeling it was more than just food coloring.

All through supper Soda was quiet, and he didn't eat much, which you'd think would have been enough to set off the alarm bells even in my messed up head. Most of the time you can't shut him up or fill him up. But Darry didn't say anything, and I didn't either, and then after supper Darry found my "theme paper," which drove every other concern out of my mind.

"Ponyboy Curtis," he yelled, "what on earth do you think you're doin'? You been lousing up that class all semester, and your teacher gives you one last chance to fix it, and _this_ is what you come up with?"

"What's the sweat about my schoolwork?" I shouted back. "I'll just have to get a job soon as I get out of high school anyway! Look at Soda; he dropped out, and he's doin' okay!"

"You're not gonna drop out! With your brains, you could get a scholarship and we could put you through college. You could get outta this neighborhood, go make a better life for yourself somewhere. I ain't lettin' you throw that chance away!"

"What if I don't wanna get outta this neighborhood? What if I wanna stay a greaser and carry a blade and get in fights and be tough like—like—like Dally?" I hadn't said his name since the night he died, and I stumbled over it.

"You wanna end up like Dally?" Darry demanded. "Dead at seventeen, gunned down in the street? Is that what you want?"

"Well if I do, that's none of your business!" I hollered. "Just lay off me already! Soda, tell him to lay off!"

Soda had been in the doorway, his head bouncing back and forth between the two of us. He made a kind of choked noise in his throat, and Darry and I both turned to look at him. His face was white, and when he looked at me there was agony behind his eyes.

"Don't… Oh, you guys, why can't you just…" Breaking off, he turned around and bolted. I heart the front door slam shut. Darry and I stared at each other for a long moment, dumbstruck.

Suddenly I noticed an envelope lying on the floor where Soda had been standing. I went to pick it up, but Darry got there first.

"It's the letter he wrote Sandy," he said without expression, turning it over in his big hand. "Returned unopened."

So that was what had been bugging Soda all afternoon. Probably why he'd been so interested in the mail the last few weeks, checking it first thing when he got home from work. He'd been waiting for a letter from his girl, and instead he'd gotten this.

"When Sandy went to Florida… it wasn't Soda, Ponyboy. He told me he loved her, but I guess she didn't love him like he thought she did, because it wasn't him."

"You don't have to draw me a picture," I said.

"He wanted to marry her anyway. Even though it wasn't his kid, he'd have taken on the responsibility. But instead she just left." Darry looked at me and shook his head. "I can't figure why he never told you. Steve or Two-Bit, sure, but I thought you two told each other everything."

"Maybe he tried," I said. I'd never thought of Soda having any problems—he seemed so happy all the time—but he must have. Everybody did. Soda always listened when I was in trouble, no matter how busy he was, but I was always caught up reading or daydreaming; he could have been trying to talk to me and I might never have noticed. I felt sick and cold with shame.

"That week you were gone—both you and Sandy in the same week—I thought it was gonna break him. I don't know what would've happened if you hadn't turned up when you did."

I nodded, trying to wrap my head around this new side of Soda. Then I realized this wasn't the time. "Come on, Darry, let's go after him."

Darry set down the envelope, and we took off. Soda was out of sight by the time we got outside, but we knew he'd be headed for the park. It didn't take long before we caught sight of him. He was still running flat out, but there's a reason Darry and I are the athletes of the family.

"Circle around and cut him off," Darry ordered, since I was the track star. "I'll stay right behind him."

I started through the trees, hoping to cut him off halfway through the park. I was out of condition and my coordination issues weren't helping when it came to running over tree roots, but I managed to get ahead of him. I was coming back toward the road when my foot caught a root I hadn't even seen, and I wiped out hard.

"Pony!" I heard two voices shout from a distance. In a few seconds Soda had his arms around me and was helping me sit up. Darry wasn't far behind.

"How many fingers, Pony?" Soda asked, holding up his hand so close to my face I couldn't have counted them even if I hadn't just hit my head.

"Here, let me look at his pupils," said Darry, moving Soda aside and taking my face in his hands. I blinked up at him while he examined me. "Look the same size to me. I think he's all right. Pony?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm all right," I said, pulling away from him. "Get off me."

"Man, Pony," said Soda, clapping me on the back, "you didn't have to pull a stunt like that to make me stop. I'd've let you catch me eventually."

I swatted at him, and he laughed.

"Sorry, kiddo," Darry said. "I didn't even think about you having to run over the tree roots."

See what I mean? I get hurt and suddenly here come the apologies.

"Where did you think you were goin', Soda?" I asked, ignoring Darry.

Soda shrugged. "I dunno. I just… I can't stand the way y'all fight all the time. I thought for a while there you were startin' to dig each other, but lately it's gotten worse than ever, and I end up like the middleman in a tug o' war, gettin' pulled in two. Sometimes I just have to get out or I'll bust."

I looked at Darry, startled, and he looked back at me with the same expression. Soda was always a bystander in our fights, or sometimes our referee; we'd never thought of our fighting actually affecting him.

Soda was fiddling with some dead grass. "I mean, I can't take sides. It'd be a lot easier if I could, but I always see where both of you are coming from, and I just wish I could make you see each other's side of things. Darry yells too much and tries too hard and takes everything too serious, but Ponyboy, you don't think enough, you don't realize all Darry's givin' up just to give you a chance he missed out on. It _is_ his business to try and get you out of the hood, 'cause he's the one workin' himself to death to make it happen. He _can't _let you throw it all away just to end up like poor Dally. And I don't think you want that either, Pony, whatever you say."

He was looking at me so earnest it gave me chills, and I found I couldn't quite meet his eyes. He was right of course, every word, and I knew it.

"And Darry," he went on, "you gotta try to understand him more, and quit buggin' him over every little mistake he makes. He's just a kid, even if he is smart. He feels things different, and you ain't gonna turn him into some perfect little copy of you by yellin' at him. You'll just end up pushin' him away."

Darry hung his head, and I knew he knew Soda was right, too. I suddenly realized all my yelling at Darry the last few weeks had been trying to tell him exactly what Soda had just said, only Soda hadn't had to yell a word of it.

"Come on, guys, it's bad enough havin' to listen to it, but when you start tryin' to get me to take sides…" Tears welled up in his eyes, and he quickly brushed them away. "We're all we've got left. If we don't have each other, we don't have anything."

I was nodding, and so was Darry. "You're right, little buddy," he said, taking a deep breath. "We gotta stick together." He looked at me. "Truce?"

"Truce," I said. "Soda's right, we can't fight anymore."

Soda smiled at us, and it was his old sun-coming-out-from-behind-the-clouds smile. "Thanks, guys."

I knew that wasn't gonna be the end of it—after all, people don't change overnight—but me and Darry were gonna start making an effort to understand each other better. It helped, what Soda had said about Darry; I thought if I could keep it in my head, I might be able to be patient with him a little more. And maybe, if Darry could remember what Soda had said about me, it'd help him be more patient, too. We would always have misunderstandings; we were too different not to. And Soda would always be the middleman. But maybe instead of me and Darry pulling him apart, we could start letting him help pull us together.


End file.
